Christianity As State Religion Supported By One-Third Of Americans, Poll Finds

Christianity As State Religion Supported By One-Third Of Americans, Poll Finds

Although the North Carolina House of Representatives killed a bill Thursday that would have paved the way for establishing an official state religion, a new national HuffPost/YouGov poll finds widespread support for doing so.

The new survey finds that 34 percent of adults would favor establishing Christianity as the official state religion in their own state, while 47 percent would oppose doing so. Thirty-two percent said that they would favor a constitutional amendment making Christianity the official religion of the United States, with 52 percent saying they were opposed.

Although a large percentage of Americans said they would favor establishing a state religion, only 11 percent said they thought the U.S. Constitution allowed states to do so. Fifty-eight percent said they didn't think it was constitutional, and 31 percent said they were not sure.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment, which (among other things) prohibits the government from establishing an official religion, also applies to the states.

Republicans were more likely than Democrats or independents to say that they would favor establishing Christianity as an official state religion, with 55 percent favoring it in their own state and 46 percent favoring a national constitutional amendment.

” WHICH version of christianity ?” – ah, indeed, that is where the real fun begins and the ramifications of the parable of “Brian’s Shoe” would hit every American flat dab in the face! I’m, of course, all for it, but with this macabre caveat – I will, of course and of necessity, be forced to kill all who oppose my own special version of religion. So, bring on state sponsored religion, but take heed – it will be mine or the highway for you. My sword stands ready!

The weak tea and victoria sponge appreciation cult evolved from anglicanism. They don’t read their bibles properly or have developed a method of ignoring the obnoxious bits and the most dangerous idea they have is spinsters cycling to evensong. Aah but perhaps these aren’t real xtians?

Rod the farmer asks which version of christianity why the one with the loudest voice and biggest financial backing of course.

For the purpose of polls like this one the undefined “fudgist version”, would be first choice!
Of course if they were daft enough to support this as legislation, the screams of, “this is the wrong form of Xtianity abusing my rights!” would shortly follow!

It needed something special to unseat and unbalance the US gobbly gook fraternity that pretended wide eyed innocence and boasted of the amount of jeebus drooling in the land meant the ‘therefore god’ meme which was their only real contribution to the debate.

US jeebus whispering cults kind of finds an odd and unintended effect, it counterbalances each and every cockamamie interpretation worshipped by every cockamamie congregation throughout the length and breadth so that none held dominance as such.
By the welter of cults invented and those adhered to, Xtianity has affectively neutered itself as the force majore that it enjoyed up to the reformation in Europe.
Indeed divided they stand….the rational were lucky really!

Xtianity is now to diverse and they hate each other just to much to be anything other then cult ville meets Nightmare on elm Street thus providing a gruesome and mildly entertaining act, if one finds boredom is the way of things.

The folk might get all pompous and bright eyed, bushy tailed, at the mention of a state religion, but methinks the majority might only be considering advantage and stability.
I have no idea on stats but every year hundreds of cults open doors and brandish bank account details for intended victims to fill cos god apparently wills it, but at the same time hundreds fold up either in debt or due to mismanagement or other!

So US Xtianity is not a firm basis to rely on year after year and every cult is different dah de dah de dah!

A robust and government backed…whoever is in government…religion might sound rather appealing.

Three Words to disabuse them of their notions… ‘Church of England!’

Now here is the template of a state religion…and look at the pathetic state of it!

Buildings crumbling, bums on pews dwindling year on year, recruitment abysmal, arguments, policy dearth, distrust, suspicion, ageing clientèle, irrelevancy and power struggles between creationists, evangelicals and moderates.
And all because a state religion does not necessarily get unconditional lurve’ from the state treasury!

Schism seems likely sooner rather then later, and the British public regard them more as a scruffy slightly whiffy pet then as a representative organization so they will get little to no support from them.

You see religions grow fat lethargic and complacent when allied to a government, they think they are safe from the nasty wasty secular world, and to a great degree that is true, but they are not insulated against themselves and their own insane dogmatic issues.

They are is short spinning apart at the seams….it is a wonderful sight!

What will happen?……they will end up either dying, average fan age is above the 60 year old benchmark, leaving the faith due to irritation, a few have stormed off to the RCC as it happens, the rest seem to be drifting into spiritual but no allegiances, and joining the smaller cults like the evangelical happy clappies.

So far so good but that means that they have lost so much national influence in their prissiness that they have shot themselves in their own foot…again!

No one in London will be much bothered by what the brethren preach in Leeds…or Manchester…it will be every cult for itself…they, none of them , will be eligible to be considered for the Church of England status…just to small and unrepresentative.

In fact they will gain the status of the American Churches enjoy full independence and devil takes the hindmost.

They are in a mess, that is how well the model lasts…OK they twitched and shook for 450+ yrs but they were never a threat after the reformation ever again, (they just took a while to realise they were dead), unlike the RCC which is a threat in and of itself.

The C of E became eccentric and very British…’nother cup of cha Vicar?…do have some cake!

It is a rather undignified end to a state religion but they were bright for a very short while but that run out around the end of the 1st WW….just spluttered more then burned as it ‘appens from then on!

Seems they have finally guttered out!……

So by all means, allow it to happen, it is a death sentence…eventually!

Religious folks are fond of attacking the establishment clause of the first amendment. In truth, they are its primary beneficiaries. In the USA, you are free to hold whatever horse-shit religious beliefs that you choose, worship as you wish, and your church will not be taxed. I’m tempted to endorse the idea of a one-year experiment with establishing the christian ‘religion’, because by about 9am on January 1st, all hell would have broekn loose. Imagine the chaos with selecting whose prayers to read on the first day of school. And by the way, taxing of church property also begins at 12.01am, January 1.

The problem with this poll is that it fails to recognize that Christianity is not one but ~40,000 disparate faiths. Right now, Islam and atheism are common targets of disdain but that is only recent history. Much of what compelled us to escape England was the perpetual bloody conflict between Roman Catholicism and the Church of England, and whoever was in power would happily gut the Quakers and Puritans who were fleeing to the colonies.

So, history tells us, it would happen again with a compulsory “Christianity”. Do we think the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Latter Day Saints and the Southern Baptist Convention would coexist peacefully while competing to integrate the same population into their respective flocks? They’d be at each others’ throats inside a year.

Those that try to re-frame the establishment clause as “Freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion” forget our history. They forget the religious persecution that occurred within the colonies because groups favored their brand of Jesus over anyone else’s and were willing to go to arms to enforce it.

Christians don’t like each other much, because PEOPLE don’t like each other much. And the ones that push for hatred and intolerance are ignoring their sworn enemies only because for now they have more obvious fish to fry.

I think it sums the xtian delusion up with the exodus to the USA of the fundagelicals from Europe in the 17th century…

The claim you hear today is because they were fleeing persecution…that is true in so far as to what they were actually fleeing was the fact they felt they were being persecuted by not being allowed to persecute others!
They thought that dreadfully unfair and decided to go and form their own theocracy where they could discriminate and persecute anyone they fancied…that appealed to them!

I think it sums the xtian delusion up with the exodus to the USA of the fundagelicals from Europe in the 17th century…

The claim you hear today is because they were fleeing persecution…that is true in so far as to what they were actually fleeing was the fact they felt they were being persecuted by not being allowed to persecute others!
They thought that dreadfully unfair and decided to go and form their own theocracy where they could discriminate and persecute anyone they fancied…that appealed to them!

Religious history is a confusing morass and the more one looks at it the worse it gets, but there are times when it would help to have a little more information on board. Look into Roger Williams and separation of church and state. Jefferson’s “wall of separation” phrase goes back to R.W.

To get a different perspective on the right wing relgious-political-oligarchic coalition, suggest reading the following with an eye for loose analogies, for the feel of it. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve been feeling like I live in a society being held hostage by a coalition of authoritarian conservative religious, political, corporate and plutocratic interests. We’ve been pushed so hard right on all fronts that the left has been dragged to what used to be the center. That’s close enough to dictatorship for me.

Pardon my frankness, but if anyone who finds trends like this more amusing than worrisome or alarming might consider getting an alignment check. There are strong currents of anti-intellectualism, authoritarianism, racism and nationalism in American society. The USA may have a secular Constitution but it has a highly religious, Christian population divided between catholic, evangelical/fundamentalist and various mainstream protestant denominations. The catholic hierarchy, conservative catholics and the right wing protestants have more in common that not, There used to be a strong anti-catholic (anti-papist) sentiment, particularly in the South but conservative political ideology and anti-abortion, anti-birth control, anti-LGBT commonalities seem to have overcome past antipathies.

We’ve got powerful forces who have been trying their damnedest to dismantle every progressive accomplishment of the past 100 years or more, including the Constitution. A huge part of the electorate has been co-opted into voting against their own best interests. Repeat” vote. They’re votes count just as much and they are more disciplined and more motivated.

As I understand it the Puritans left England because they found it too permissive and too open minded.they were planning to set up a state where there was only going to be one religion and they would be free to persecute anyone who disagreed. Fortunately that didn’t work out and the poll referenced shows that a sensible majority of Americans still refuse to fall for their nonsense. It’s really encouraging and given the evil ‘blame the poor and disabled for the failings of the rich and reckless’ attitude prevailing here, makes me think emigration there might be a sensible proposition. Yes, moderators, I know I have strayed from the straight and narrow. Bless me mods! It has been 2 weeks since my last confusion.

The problem with this poll is that it fails to recognize that Christianity is not one but ~40,000 disparate faiths. Right now, Islam and atheism are common targets of disdain but that is only recent history. Much of what compelled us to escape England was the perpetual bloody conflict between Roman Catholicism and the Church of England, and whoever was in power would happily gut the Quakers and Puritans who were fleeing to the colonies.

So, history tells us, it would happen again with a compulsory “Christianity”. Do we think the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Latter Day Saints and the Southern Baptist Convention would coexist peacefully while competing to integrate the same population into their respective flocks? They’d be at each others’ throats inside a year.

Those that try to re-frame the establishment clause as “Freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion” forget our history. They forget the religious persecution that occurred within the colonies because groups favored their brand of Jesus over anyone else’s and were willing to go to arms to enforce it.

Christians don’t like each other much, because PEOPLE don’t like each other much. And the ones that push for hatred and intolerance are ignoring their sworn enemies only because for now they have more obvious fish to fry.

I think it sums the xtian delusion up with the exodus to the USA of the fundagelicals from Europe in the 17th century…

The claim you hear today is because they were fleeing persecution…that is true in so far as to what they were actually fleeing was the fact they felt they were being persecuted by not being allowed to persecute others!
They thought that dreadfully unfair and decided to go and form their own theocracy where they could discriminate and persecute anyone they fancied…that appealed to them!

That description applies accurately to the original pilgrims to the shoreline that was to later be called Massachusetts colony. It does NOT apply to people emigrating to the USA, as is being implied, because the USA didn’t exist yet. The laws being referred to here with the phrase “designed to be a theocracy” were the laws the pilgrims instituted to run their small colony settlements before the USA existed. They are NOT an accurate account of the laws of the USA itself. By the time there was a USA, these fundamentalist pilgrims were no longer the majority and plenty of others had emigrated to the colonies since then for lots of reasons many of them nonreligious.

That description applies accurately to the original pilgrims to the shoreline that was to later be called Massachusetts colony. It does NOT apply to people emigrating to the USA, as is being implied, because the USA didn’t exist yet.

The point I was referring to is that almost every Republican mouthpiece, today and every single evangelical conservative wack job, claim quit unambiguously that the USA WAS founded on the pilgrims principles that America was a country that provided a home for persecuted xtians, therefore the constitutional amendments preserving religion etc etc… which you quite rightly point out that it did.

But it is the orators that go no further into the history then the first pilgrims when haranguing an audience with a rather distorted view of American foundation on xtian terms.

If there was a two party election and 34% voted for one party and 47 (or even 52%) voted for the other, this would be a comprehensive win for the party with the larger proportion of the vote… similar polling in Australia has people predicting electoral oblivion for the current governing party.

So surely the title of this article should be something like “Christianity as a state religion – comprehensively quashed.”… I’m sure others can come up with more imaginative titles in a similar vein.

Which variation of christianity… the question isn’t posed to those being asked. I think a literal (read… original misogynist and brutal) variation would yield far fewer supporters. Maybe there should be a poll on which version these people prefer and why the other 2/3’s (quite a significant percentage) feel otherwise.

I think it sums the xtian delusion up with the exodus to the USA of the fundagelicals from Europe in the 17th century…

The claim you hear today is because they were fleeing persecution…that is true in so far as to what they were actually fleeing was the fact they felt they were being persecuted by not being allowed to persecute others!
They thought that dreadfully unfair and decided to go and form their own theocracy where they could discriminate and persecute anyone they fancied…that appealed to them!

Yes. I gained that piece of information from Stephen Fry on QI. Love that show.

A real democracy can’t have an official religion because that would mean people belonging to other creeds would be discriminated. However, let’s imagine that the huge majority of people decide to have the Christian religion as the official one, then which one?, which Christian religion? There’re so many, each of them with so varied and exotic interpretations that it wouldn’t be possible to choose one. Besides, what’s the purpose of having an official religion?? Sheer stupidity.

However, let’s imagine that the huge majority of people decide to have the Christian religion as the official one, then which one?, which Christian religion? There’re so many, each of them with so varied and exotic interpretations that it wouldn’t be possible to choose one.

I think Northern Ireland and the Irish republic are good examples of how differing Xtian religious groups have stirred years of up brutal conflicts.